Occasionally different printing technologies are used to print on the same media. For example, business stationery, such as letterhead, may be printed on a bulk basis using a commercial, high-speed printing technology, such as offset analog press technology. When a particular piece of the stationery is then used, another printing technology may be employed, such as an inkjet printer or a laser printer. The information that does not change between print jobs, such as a company's name and address, is likely printed using the former printing technology, whereas information that is specific to a print job, such as the substance of a letter, is usually printed using the latter printing technology.
Many times the colors that are printed with one printing technology are desirably matched when printing with another printing technology. For example, the letterhead media that is printing with a high-speed offset printing technology may have a company logo printed in a particular color. When printing on a piece of letterhead using another printing technology, such as inkjet technology, the letter writer's name may be desired to be printed in the same color. The output of color by the inkjet printing device should match the color previously output by the high-speed offset printing device, so that, for instance, the letter recipient cannot discern that two different printing technologies were used to print on the media.
However, color matching between printing technologies can be difficult. Spot colors printed by analog printing technologies may result from specially mixed inks, and may exceed the color gamut of process colors printed by digital printing technologies, such as inkjet printers, that rely upon combining base colors to achieve a desired color. For instance, inkjet printers use a limited selection of color inks, such as cyan, magenta, yellow, and black, to yield other colors by combination. Even if a particular spot color has a mapped process color, differences in how the printing technologies print on specific media, as well as other factors, can cause visible color differences between the spot and the process colors.